Counting Up the Mommy Bloggers

Motherhood used to isolate women from the wider world. Now, it provides them with a platform from which to address the world in the role of "mommy blogger." A new report from eMarketer documents the trajectory of this phenomenon.The report says the number of mommy bloggers is expected to grow from 3.7 million last year to 3.9 million this year. With the growth rate expected to bounce around in the next few years (from a high of 3.6 percent in 2012 to a low of 1.6 percent in 2013), eMarketer predicts the number of mommy bloggers in the U.S. will reach 4.4 million in 2014. (For the purposes of the report, mommy bloggers were defined as "adult female Internet users with children under 18 in the household who write blogs about any subject at least monthly.")Looking at it another way, the report forecasts a small rise during the next few years in the proportion of Internet-using mothers who'll be blogging, from 12.1 percent this year to 13.2 percent in 2014. Why such a modest rate of increase? eMarketer points to a couple of factors. For one, it says Facebook and Twitter, "which allow people to keep a running log of their thoughts and activities, have taken some of the momentum away from blogging." It notes in this regard that blogs "are labor-intensive and require much more thought and upkeep than posting quick status updates." The report also notes the related fact that "young people are now less likely to blog than they used to be," and mothers of minor children tend to be relatively young themselves.The same skew in age helps explain why mothers of minor children are more likely than women in general to be Internet users. According to the report, "A full 90.3 percent of moms access the Internet from any location at least once a month, compared to 76.3 percent of all adult females." The number of mom Internet users is, of course, at the mercy of population and fertility trends, and the report forecasts it will rise negligibly in the next few years, from 32.3 million this year to 33 million in 2014.Along with writing blogs, mothers read them, too. The report says 54 percent of mom Internet users are blog readers, and it predicts the figure will climb to 63 percent in 2014.

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Counting Up the Mommy Bloggers

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver